The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for chilling bottles, and more particularly still or sparkling wine bottles.
Prior methods of chilling wine bottles deploy a container filled with either ice or ice water. The temperature of the bottle contents eventually comes to equilibrium with the ice or ice water temperature. A large volume of ice or ice water is used to chill the wine rapidly. While it is desirable to serve white wines in a temperature range of about 42° F. to about 55° F., the more ice or ice water used to chill the bottle quickly, the more likely the wine is to be too cold, that is between about 36° to 32° F. toward the end of a meal.
It is therefore a first object of the present invention to provide a superior method and apparatus for chilling beverages, including wine bottles . . . .
It is another object of the invention to provide an apparatus and method for cooling wine with ice or cold water that does overly chill beverage, yet keeps them cold and within a desired temperature range for table use over many hours.
It is another object of the invention to provide such an apparatus for use in an improved method which is adaptable to different size beverage container.